The Full Moon

The Moon is the only known natural satellite of our planet. With its distance of less than 400.000 km from the Earth, it is also the first step when climbing the cosmic ladder and leaving for a space journey. It is a obvious presence in the night sky, but still an amazing view every time you look at it. Here it is an almost (98.5%) full moon, with a very fascinating albedo pattern.

This image was captured with the Planewave17″, part of the Virtual Telescope Project. It comes from a two single shots, used to make a mosaic, taken through a OIII filter to “kill” the otherwise too high luminosity. The OTA in installed on a Paramount ME mount, by Software Bisque. The CCD camera is a SBIG STL 6303E .

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